If you look at the Nunn polling combined with the decline at Fox News the trend is clear. If Nunn wins or not the harsh spewing from Hannity/Phil Kent crowd is working with an older demographic, but obviously not a good long term strategy for the GOP. The GOP needs a real self-examination…..

FROM POSTED ARTICLE TODAY:

….The younger electorate has consequences. The poll showed Michelle Nunn, a Democrat, leading two possible Republican opponents, David Perdue and Jack Kingston, by 3 and 6 percentage points. But Ms. Nunn led by about 20 points among those 18 to 29, while trailing by 24 and 31 points among voters over age 65. If the Rasmussen sample were as old as a midterm electorate, Ms. Nunn would have trailed Mr. Perdue by about 1 percentage point and led Mr. Kingston by about 3 points……….

ARTICLE ABOUT FOX NEWS:

………Fox News’ ratings took a hit in the key demo for the month of May.
The network drew 264,000 viewers ages 25-54 during primetime — the lowest it has had in over 12 years, since August 2001. Its entire primetime lineup — hosted by Greta Van Susteren, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity — hit 12-year lows in the demo. Still, Fox News maintained its cable news dominance over competing networks in both the demo and in total viewers.

MSNBC and CNN battled it out for second place. MSNBC beat its rival in weekday primetime in both total viewers (593,000 vs. CNN’s 384,000) and in the demo (145,000 vs. CNN’s 131,000). The network reversed its fortunes since last month, when CNN was flying high from its coverage of missing Flight 370. MSNBC also beat CNN in both total viewers and the demo for total day ratings for the first week in May.

Fox News has suffered woes in the demo in the past. The network, for example, lost 30 percent of its viewers ages 25-54 in 2013 compared to 2012. It was up in the demo, however, during the first quarter of 2014, compared to the final quarter in 2013………..

The GOP needs to win elections now, now sometime in the future when people under age 30 get older and more conservative.

Also, I had a conversation with a millennial recently that went something like this:
Me: Ronald Reagan was the model conservative.
Millennial: Ronald Reagan? That’s before I was born. The main thing I know about Reagan is that he spent a lot of money and put the nation into debt.
Me: Reagan invested in the military so we could defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War. That was an important victory for freedom.
Millennial: I don’t remember that, either.

That’s why some of the messaging the GOP is using fails with the younger generation.

“That’s why some of the messaging the GOP is using fails with the younger generation.”

Yet millennials are very familiar with the accomplishments and modern relevancy of people like John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, FDR, etc. Why? Because the media, schools, popular entertainment etc. frequently discusses the importance of things like feminism, civil rights, gay rights, environmentalism, the anti-war movement, the New Deal, the Great Society etc. Meanwhile, such things as how Reagan (and Thatcher) pulled both countries out of economic tailspins using policies that are still being used in some respect today (see Germany, the most successful economy in the EU) and how they helped topple the Soviet bloc is hardly mentioned. Joe McCarthy and the HUAC are more negatively depicted these days than the Soviet Union ever was. It is never mentioned how we lived under the threat of nuclear war for 40 years, and if it is, it is only to mention OUR failure to UNILATERALLY disarm. And is it ever mentioned that Lenin and Stalin killed more people than Hitler? Nope.

The GOP messaging fails with the younger generation because the GOP is the only one promoting the message. The Dems have the schools, the “mainstream” media and Hollywood to help get theirs out. And when do you attend school? When you are young for the most part … most people finish their education by their early 20s. Movies and TV shows? Ditto … heavily, even disproportionately consumed by young people.

Your faith in the knowledge of millenials is amusing. They don’t know who MLK or Kennedy are either. 85% of them wouldn’t be able to tell you who their congressman is RIGHT NOW. They are just not as engaged in politics, probably because they’re too busy trying to find a job.

It also depends on what millennials you talk to. I had a long detailed conversation with a 21-year-old. His point of view is the GOP has ‘forsaken’ the words of Eisenhower and hads become this ‘social conservitive’ agenda party. He was able to recite to my parts of Eisenhowers farewell address. He pointed out how he lead the way on inferstructure. This young man from a Republican party family looks at Reagan and see the guy who killed the industral midwest and middle class jobs, and who created the industrial complex. He looks at Bush 43 as over stepping the bounds of his father when 41 did not invade Iraq when he had the world’s backing to do so. He didn’t get how the GOP could stands for limited government involvemnet but wanted to control who married who and what his sister could do with her own boby. His parting shot was how he thought Reagan himself would not live up to the standards of his own party today so why should ‘we’ love him. Again, this is a 21 year old small government white male who calls himself a Rebulican but doesn’t undertand the current GOP.

The millennials can assess the situation and know their misguided decisions will be backstopped by parents and/or government programs while good decisions might be rewarded with a public job. They know that public service jobs, local, state or Fed is, on balance, the favored job choice offering a private level wage or more, benefits and retiring in their 50’s to pursue other opportunities. The Democrats promise to expand those “opportunities” and the security. The Republicans, some, but not so much. The Democrats and Republicans don’t differentiate much outside this, so why not go along ?

The Republicans should, but don’t, offer equal opportunity, a sensible tax structure, an open competitive marketplace, research and support but not ownership or massive subsidies, a strong military, reliable public infrastructure, well managed entitlement programs for individuals….

The Rockefeller Republicans are caught up in a I will do more for you rat race…..they should embrace setting the individual free within the boundaries of a nation of rules and laws.

And for the millennials that like to get outdoors or at least admire it through Outside Magazine, they should be upset with Democrat spending impacts on park budgets cuts to meet other demands but the GOP lowered the bar.

The Republicans respond, like Governor Scott in Florida who wants to sell off public land and parks….53 were on his list…..Theodore Roosevelt had to roll over in his grave.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was way more complicated than the 1980’s defense build up. I didn’t take you for someone who thought that “Reagan beat the Russians”. The collapse was two decades in the making and had a lot to do with internal Soviet reforms.

A key part of the collapse was lack of infastructure investment…..Soviet Union could not move goods effiecently across the country…..created lots of poverty….one could argue they spent way to much in arms race while they had massive infastructure problems….Irronic if you think about our country via Iraq/Afghanistan spending while our infastructure needs investment….

Yeah, the huge Soviet buildup that pretty much bankrupted them (in part by sucking up resources needed to reform things like agriculture, which was a walking disaster) came in a large part during the Brezhnev era of the 60s and 70s, in part due to fundamental misunderstandings about what war was actually like in the Nuclear Age–the Soviets still built all their factories for ready conversion into a war economy like it was 1941 when you could turn Ford into a Tank company and a fight with your other power would last years instead of seconds. And they did that even as they, trapped by the clout of the military, insisted on making more and more of everything for them: Not just new types of weapons, but just building more and more tanks, artillery pieces, guns, submarines, types of aircraft, you name it. Even as detente was through those years lessening the likelyhood they’d ever be needed, they did it in part to ‘keep the production lines hot’ for when they’d be needed in their vision of a 1930s war economy and because the defense ministry was a base of Brezhnev power, so he made sure to keep the generals happy by giving them whatever they wanted, even as the rest of the country’s economy went to hell.

The Soviet system was doomed long before Reagan took office. He didn’t knock it over–indeed, the great strength of Reagan was overruling the hard liners in his administration, listening to guys like George Shultz instead of Casper Weinberger and the hawks at the Pentagon, and realizing that Gorbachev was sincere about arms reduction and his attempts to reform the Soviet Union (unsuccessful though they ultimately were) and that he had a real partner. It’s kind of amazing when you go back and read all the different ways the hawks, who had been Reagan’s top supporters, had their knives in his back at the time for his overtures and dealing with Gorbachev. The spin that all that buildup was what won the Cold War was a lot of legacy buffing from people who got it wrong from 1985 to 1988.

You make a very good about the Neocon spinning of President Reagan……The birth of the Powel doctrine came after the Beirut disaster…..Bush 2 went off the reservation…..In fact as you probably know, Bush 2 was cheerleading for occupation of Iraq 1….ironically Cheney gave a speech about why not to invade Iraq….He was spot on… The VP and Bush 2 should of listen to his first speech….not the new policy of nation building…..smart infrastructure investment has been a key factor to our economy from the start….From Lewis and Clark, railroads, airports, electronic grid…..

Matt – Yes, there was more to the Soviet collapse than Reagan alone. I was responding to the complaint that Reagan spent a lot of money. And keep in mind that I’ve simplified a lot here in order to make a point — that the way we present the GOP don’t carry a lot of weight with millennials.

How President Reagan fostered it is a key point, why he did not turn off younger people….Nation building policy is a negative issue for younger voters especially…Which is why Rand and his father poll better with younger voters than the NEOCON side of the GOP. War on drugs, War on culture, War on world…..does not help with younger voters….

I don’t get this “harsh spewing” thing that keeps getting repeated. What are Republicans supposed to do? Not campaign? Not attack candidates or issues?

So how is a GOP campaign supposed to go, practically? “My opponent is a fine, qualified, ideologically acceptable and sensible candidate and my candidate’s issues are either correct or not really that objectionable, but hey, vote for me anyway even though I cannot give you a single clear reason why.” GOP politicians are supposed to A) not mention social issues because it is hate and pandering and limit themselves to economic/small government issues and B) on economic/small government issues any talk of actually reducing spending or eliminating programs or agencies is depicted as an attack on the people who use them, and also sexist/racist hate if said programs benefit women, minorities etc.

So basically, anything other than endorsing Democrat candidates and positions gets called “hateful spewing.” Meanwhile, when Democrats accuse Republican/Libertarian/Tea Party ideology and candidates as hateful, racist, misogynist, anti-poor, anti-immigrant, heartless, neo-Confederate, anti-science, anti-education etc. somehow that isn’t viewed as “hateful spewing.” The whole “war on women” thing? Nothing hateful about that at all!

Even if the GOP needs to change their gameplan, the way to do it IS NOT to accept the suggestions of the Democrats, which is ALWAYS to stop raising objections to Democratic ideology, policy and candidates and instead emulate them. Result: even if the GOP candidates do win – and they won’t – big deal, you will only have the GOP working to advance the Democratic agenda instead of the Democrats doing it.

It comes down to Democrats’ claiming that the ideal route for the GOP is to stop opposing their candidates and agenda. It is ideal alright, but not for the GOP.

If you aren’t going to offer an alternative to the democrats, then we might as well all be voting for the dems, because in essence that’s the only option. And yes, you are correct, the Dems do not want an alternative to their policies (should be self-explanatory). The 2010 wave was one of those brief moments where the GOP (with a firm slap in the back of the head from the TP) suddenly remembered they were supposed to be against big gov’t and were rewarded with a 1st term turnover in the House (the largest House swing since 1948! AKA: a political ***-whooping). Why on earth the GOP has put the brakes on the gung-ho elements within the party leaves me befuddled (other than the party leadership seeking to hold onto their cushy positions at all costs, even if it means forcing the GOP back into stagnation).

So back out of the woodwork come the folks who say the GOP should be more moderate and all, you know, meet the dems halfway even though they won’t take a step in the GOP’s direction. Compromise and all that.

All the while, the dems whisper in the ears of the GOP that it’s the fringe elements in the party that are causing the party to shrink. You know, those fanatics who stormed the House in 2010 and haven’t been allowed to do so by their own party leadership since. I’d start questioning the motives of those in power in the GOP, and what reasoning they have for holding the party back.

Because constantly repeating debunked and now totally irrelevant myths from a former Rush Limbaugh collaborator tend to make the whole message irrelevant. Especially in the minds of those who do not follow politics on a daily basis like the young couples that live around me. At least Hearst had to buy pulp paper and presses to spread yellow journalism. President Obama is about to enter the lame duck portion of his Presidency and at this point questions regarding his citizenship are as relevant to the real issues of the day as are the questions of Bill Clinton’s hummers. I can’t say the George W. Bush’s WMDs are irrelevant since that is still good for a couple of trillion dollars to the national debt.

As long as you depend upon reading your “news” from one-sided propaganda sites that only promote your side you don’t even recognize it as such. WND also quoted a satirical piece from The Onion as “news” once that contained a fake quote from a satanist about how Harry Potter had been good for business. Both the “news” article and the retraction disappeared faster than a fart in a March wind on top of Stone Mountain.

No he’s not. No one else cares. The rational-minded have long since left the issue of Obama’s birth certificate behind, in fact, it never was an issue with the rational-minded. Just like Bush, Clinton, Reagan, etc. place of birth was never an issue.